It's not just Orion's heat shield; the mission's ground systems are running out of time.
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Artemis II almost certainly will miss its September 2025 launch date
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Out of curiosity, since there's no intention to leave the Orion module during the flight, would regular flight suits be used for Artemis II, or will they be using the same type of flight suit Butch and Sunni wore on Starliner?
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What's the odds of Superheavy / Starship flying a similar profile mission first?
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Yeah, that sounds about right for Artemis: the presumption is that they'll miss the schedule, and the danger is that everything will actually be ready on time.
Luckily for the SLS and Orion contractors, it's a very low risk.
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Disappointed but not surprised. Although I am surprised at how long the heat shield investigation is taking; this isn't breaking news, and I would have expected a decision on that already.
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It depends on how far Artemis II gets delayed. I do think we could see a long-duration Starship mission to the Moon in 2026, if a lot of things go well.
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It's amazing to me that the Apollo 1 tragedy, subsequent redesign, and Apollo 11 landing on the moon spanned less than 2.5 years.
Half a century later we're looking at 3+ years between Artemis 1 & Artemis 2.
(I understand NASA had an insane budget back then, but damn..... this is nuts)
Half a century later we're looking at 3+ years between Artemis 1 & Artemis 2.
(I understand NASA had an insane budget back then, but damn..... this is nuts)
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I hate to say it, but perhaps they should contract out the entire program to SpaceX as a fixed price program.
I’d prefer some competition, and giving others a chance to perform, but the only things actually produced in quantity are bills. And that just doesn’t cut it.
I’d prefer some competition, and giving others a chance to perform, but the only things actually produced in quantity are bills. And that just doesn’t cut it.
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I am Jack's total lack of surprise, lol
I'm way in favor of launching an alternate mission than just holding off until all the different pieces come together. The pad from Artemis 1, SLS, and ICPS to my understanding are good to go right? I think it was Eric here that suggested an HLS + Orion docking in Earth orbit and several other very useful scenarios. That is assuming Orion's heatshield is sufficient for reentry from Earth orbit, rather than the much higher velocity Lunar return.
* can't spell 'surprise'
I'm way in favor of launching an alternate mission than just holding off until all the different pieces come together. The pad from Artemis 1, SLS, and ICPS to my understanding are good to go right? I think it was Eric here that suggested an HLS + Orion docking in Earth orbit and several other very useful scenarios. That is assuming Orion's heatshield is sufficient for reentry from Earth orbit, rather than the much higher velocity Lunar return.
* can't spell 'surprise'
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Yep It's Me
Ars Praetorian
@EricBerger Is this a typo? ...
PS: Would love to have some more "Daily Telescope" from you when you get some cycles.
PS: Would love to have some more "Daily Telescope" from you when you get some cycles.
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It's interesting to read Thomas J. Kelly's book "Moon Lander" on the building of the Apollo LM. One gets a sense of the 'can-do' drive the engineers had for Apollo.
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Ground infrastructure has run out of schedule margin? Quick, throw some more money at it!!
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That meme about consulting still holds for NASA contractors,
If you can't be part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
If you can't be part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
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Well knock me over with a feather.
NASA's lack of transparency on the issues that have occurred and continue to delay Artemis is disappointing, we basically only find out about each new problem due to GAO or OIG reporting on it. I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop and for us to find out that there is some major issue with SLS that hasn't been announced.
NASA's lack of transparency on the issues that have occurred and continue to delay Artemis is disappointing, we basically only find out about each new problem due to GAO or OIG reporting on it. I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop and for us to find out that there is some major issue with SLS that hasn't been announced.
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I'm sure that bills are exactly what the program's Congressional funders are looking for. Pork is delicious, have you ever tried buying some bacon?
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We hear a lot about delays and scheduling issues regarding NASA programs. We hear that things have run wildly over budget. People talk about how fast the Apollo program ran. We don't hear a lot of the fundamental reasons why. Why do they continue to blow through their budgets? The answer needs to be more sophisticated and nuanced than just telling us, cost-plus contracting. We need to understand why schedules are continually missed and not simply retort that it was due to budgeting constraints.
NASA has achieved astonishing and transformative things in the past. Many contractors used by NASA have created impressive technology and met prior mission goals. Something has changed in the culture, circumstances, and situation of NASA, and we need brutally honest conversations around what that change was and whether we should continue moving in the same direction.
NASA has achieved astonishing and transformative things in the past. Many contractors used by NASA have created impressive technology and met prior mission goals. Something has changed in the culture, circumstances, and situation of NASA, and we need brutally honest conversations around what that change was and whether we should continue moving in the same direction.
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Apollo 4, the first flight of a Saturn V, flew in November of 1967. For the sake of this discussion, it was analogous to Artemis I. Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to circumnavigate the moon flew in December of 1968 -- thirteen months later.
Artemis I was years late and flew in November of 2022. Now we're hearing that it might be 2026 before Artemis II? That will be well over three years and closer to four years between flights.
That is patently ridiculous, especially with the money being spent on this program. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that neither Artemis I or Artemis II will break any new exploration ground.
It's clear the legacy contractors -- Boeing, Lockheed, Bechtel and others are milking the sugar booby for as much as they can get. It's clear that Congress is perfectly willing to let them do that. At best, Artemis is a jobs program. At worst, it's a corporate swindle.
At this rate, the US will never return to the lunar surface and any ideas you may have of NASA sending a crew to the surface of Mars in your lifetime should be put aside.
Artemis I was years late and flew in November of 2022. Now we're hearing that it might be 2026 before Artemis II? That will be well over three years and closer to four years between flights.
That is patently ridiculous, especially with the money being spent on this program. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that neither Artemis I or Artemis II will break any new exploration ground.
It's clear the legacy contractors -- Boeing, Lockheed, Bechtel and others are milking the sugar booby for as much as they can get. It's clear that Congress is perfectly willing to let them do that. At best, Artemis is a jobs program. At worst, it's a corporate swindle.
At this rate, the US will never return to the lunar surface and any ideas you may have of NASA sending a crew to the surface of Mars in your lifetime should be put aside.
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Pretty slim, if they push a Starship to the Moon, they are probably going to use that Starship to either test reaching Moon orbit, or test Moon landing.
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Appreciate the suggestion, I will for sure read that book. I just finished Across the Airless Wilds, about the Lunar Rovers/Apollo 15-17. Very interesting read.
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Does anyone have an SLS launch chart like the XKCD chart for James Webb, with time on the x axis and expected launch on the y?
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Only thing new here is we've gone from a 99.5% certainty to a 99.95% certainty.
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Well they also had the Russians "breathing down their neck".
The Spice in the case of Artemis/SLS as I understand flows no matter if that pork barrel of a rocket flies or not, and while there's always science to be done it's not the primary target of the suppliers and Congress.
Suppliers mostly care about bills being paid and the others about jobs being secured.
My personal guess is that everyone is just trying to milk that cow on death row as much as they can, fully aware that it has no future in the age of Starship and New Glenn.
That's just an uneducated guess but I feel even Eric is at a loss here.
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Yeah, that was poorly worded, sorry about that.
The question I meant to ask was, since there's no need for EVA suits (which wouldn't be ready anyway), will the crew of Artemis II be using Boeing's flight/pressure suit that Butch and Sunni wore, or is another manufacturer providing flight/pressure suits?
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The problem at the core of today's NASA I believe is that political expediency has fully supplanted fact-based reality as the agency’s guiding star.
Paraphrased from Casey Handmer's blog (lots of excellent space reading there, among a couple other topics such as solar power)
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It just all seems even more insane in light of the recent Starship success. I mean they can't even get the damn multi-billion dollar crawler working and SpaceX is catching skyscrapers falling from space.
In other words, NASA is still trying to crawl while SpaceX is flying.
In other words, NASA is still trying to crawl while SpaceX is flying.
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They're going to be wearing "Orion Crew Survival System" suits, which are an iteration on the Space Shuttle suit (Advanced Crew Escape Suit) design.
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I'm pretty sure both the Starliner and Orion flight suits are made by David Clark Co, but they are different suit designs.
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I don't see Spacex bothering to man-rate Superheavy, and I believe they've said as much. Starship will be, but whether or not they'll get man-rated before this mission is launched seems to be an open question, it depends on how much SpaceX pushes it and whether NASA or other established interests slow-walks it to avoid precisely this kind of embarassment [although on the other hand, with Starship the selected lunar descent vehicle, they kind of have to eventually].
However, given that--with the entire system more-or-less proven at this point--a large number of Starship/Superheavy flights in the next year seems almost inevitable, and the delays we're looking at on this end... it's not impossible.
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If you can't figure out if a safety system like a heat shield has a problem or not, then it has a problem. They have had time to make changes and launch another test but have failed to do so.
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This episode of the Off Nominal Podcast directly says why this is happening with no holding back. it's brutal and true what Casey says!
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd2oVbt_Z_U&t=11s
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd2oVbt_Z_U&t=11s
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That would be perfect—deep-space testing of Starship. SpaceX might test HLS moon landing and return with live astronauts before Gateway is even built.
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From the outside, it's easy to make a laundry list of possible causes. Most of them probably have some truth to them. ex:
You tell us, Eric. WTF is going on? Which are the problems that insiders constantly bemoan? Which are just unfounded speculation?
- NASA has grown more cautious (and safer) since the headlong rush of the Apollo days
- NASA's scheduling is always somewhere between inept and fraudulent
- NASA is suffering severe brain drain to New Space companies
- NASA is being fleeced by prime contractors -- and all the way down the pyramid
- NASA is deliberately inefficient as a jobs program (aka blame congress)
- NASA is doing really hard things, okay? They're just hard!
You tell us, Eric. WTF is going on? Which are the problems that insiders constantly bemoan? Which are just unfounded speculation?
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It could be proposed, I'm not so confident anymore that such a proposal would not run into some friction.
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Consider how many prototypes SpaceX has built of Starship. All the times they've put head shielding on, tested it, swapped it, did a new design, added extra, etc.
NASA definitely knows they have a problem with the shielding. They know they need to do something about it. In a sane world they'd just fix it in no time at all or come up with something new. But you can't change anything on that program without incurring massive costs and delays. There is zero flexibility.
So they are stuck. Hopefully they get so stuck that someone wakes the hell up and cancels the whole boondoggle.
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No they can't. For now, there is only one vehicle capable of launching Orion into an energetic enough of a flight to do the test. A less energetic flight will likely not replicate the problem.
If they decide they need a test, they'll likely use the next SLS rocket to repeat the prior mission.
No matter what, they need to figure out why they had a deviance from the designed behavior. They can't just send a capsule up a few times and say it is good enough because the capsule made it back fine.
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I doubt congress is going to cancel the senate launch system.
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